Which language learning app could take the throne from Duo in 2025-2026?
Hi all,So with Duolingo being the most successful language learning app in the world, currently worth $16B, we all see how they quickly abandon their original mission and mostly focus on increasing revenue. Their goal is no longer to serve their users, as almost everyone already know them as the #1 solution for language learning, but to make more of the people who know them spend money - by adding new pricing tiers, adding ads, adding non-skippable content that is premium etc.
Also, technology evolves very fast and makes it easier to build similar apps, gamification mechanics are become the norm, and AI (Yes, AI…) can help generate content without a team of hundreds of people. This is also why dozens of new language learning apps pop up every day.That made me to think there may be a new opportunity in the market for a truly effective & fun app which app could replace it.
I have a few candidates in mind:
ChatGPT - ChatGPT is already extremely useful for language learning, I ask it many questions and it answers anything, we can request it to build a quiz, to do role-play, etc, even with voice mode. They will clearly continue improving and while they lack the structured content duolingo has, with long term memory they may create the world’s best language tutor, available 24/7
Lingonaut - Not launched yet, but their promise is interesting. Their goal is to be free, with no ads. They’re building it to teach, not to profit, and use the community to help. Lingonaut also plans to bring back loved features from Duo like sentence discussions, forums, and implement leaderboards so it will be more community driven and fun. Courses are developed by native-speaking volunteers, ensuring quality and real-world applicability. Definitely may succeed, even just for being free and accessible.
Langotalk - Langotalk - I’ve been following since their launch in early 2023 and it seems like they are doing really interesting things and moving fast. Langotalk combine Duolingo’s strength with ChatGPT’s. They started as a tool to practice conversations (Duolingo Max with more advanced features), but now you can create whole units based on a prompt, with 6 types of lessons, including ai chats, vocabulary, stories and grammar drills.It’s basically like everyone can have their own unique course that’s based on their weaknesses and topics of interest. I can only imagine the potential - teachers creating full gamified courses for their students, learners using it to create a course filled with references of their favorite things, etc. Looks promising.
Fluyo - While the launch was not the best it seems like they’re moving quite fast and know what they’re doing. Their main focus is similar to Duo, which is fun and addictiveness before everything else, but they take it even further by building it more similar to an addictive RPG, focused on gameplay. If they can get language learning to feel like an actual game that’s fun to play just as regular video games (I don’t think they’re there yet, but I think they think the right way), they could probably be a great alternative to Duolingo for people motivated by games.
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Why I don’t think Babble, Busuu, etc will be the ones - It seems like these apps are not really focused on core technology and innovation anymore, they’re quite big institutions but they don’t really innovate. Their current products are heavily inspired from Duo.They will probably see a new superior way to learn a language becoming publicly available and try to catch up with some delay, they may still succeed but they will not be the leaders.
This is just what I imagine will happen to the industry. Of course it’s really hard to tell. Duolingo’s team is probably the best in the world in terms of making education addictive, so only something really innovative and well executed can become a proper alternative.
What do you all think?